The Davos Apocalypse

Lomborg points out that almost everywhere cold deaths outweigh heat deaths. Fortunately, heat deaths are declining in countries with good data, likely because of ever more air conditioning. This is abundantly clear for the United States, which has seen increasing hot days since 1960 affecting a much greater population. Yet, the number of heat deaths has more than halved.

Bjorn Lomborg joined The Economist's podcast The Economist asks to discuss the question: "Poverty, health, education or climate change: where should governments spend their money?" Within each of these areas, some solutions are better than others: shouldn't we do the smart ones first?

The World Health Organization estimates that climate change will cause an additional 250,000 deaths each year in the two decades following 2030, mostly among the world’s poor. The WHO compared the real world with an imaginary one in which there’s no climate change, calculating the difference in deaths from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, dengue fever, flooding and heat.